What frustrates me about things like that, there seem to be no proper tests for that. Shouldn't there be an easy test for Aphantasia, for example, that doesn't ask me things like "do you have a mind's eye" (what does that even mean?). Such a test should not ask the test subjects to self-diagnose themselves, but it should objectively test abilities and put them on a scale. Anything else really is not that helpful.
But you can also imagine tests based on introspection which are better than just straight up asking how vivid your mental imagery is.
For example: imagine a triangle. What color is it?
For a true aphantasiac, this question is meaningless. It has no color because it’s just an abstract concept. For me it is a white outline on a black background, very vividly.
For the test to be meaningful, it should still produce accurate results when the subject is pretending to have the condition (the SAT wouldn’t be helpful if you could ace it by acting as if you know the all answers!)
Consider a turing test of sorts: I want to convince you I am phantastic, you are tasked with determining whether I am faking it. Could such a test be realized?
Consider, for example, the “draw a bicycle” phenomenon. Many alleged phantists are wholly unable to correctly render a bicycle onto paper, and furthermore they are often unable to self-evaluate that their renders are bogus. Many aphants on the other hand have no issue depicting a well formed bicycle onto a paper, and furthermore would be able to identify faulty ones.
Of course this test does not have perfect recall/accuracy, it’s just an example of how the results can be counterintuitive.
> Many aphants on the other hand have no issue depicting a well formed bicycle onto a paper, and furthermore would be able to identify faulty ones.
As one, I don't draw, I construct. A set of rules make a bicycle a bicycle, so pick a part, draw it, then sequentially continue attaching parts per the rules, and at the end, it's a valid bicycle that functions. The resultant drawing is considered good, though I couldn't "see" any part of the bicycle before or while drawing.
This isn't from an image, but it is arguably a mapping.
Similarly, I've observed those who can mentally organize concepts but can't visualize pictures are often better able to render frameworks onto whiteboards than those who picture scenes.
It's made me wonder if the same parts of the mind are used for the one or the other, as if remembering everything visually uses up circuitry that could support semantic-space-time.
A anecdote along the same lines as your drawing vs constructing observation:
I happen to be fairly adept at wood working. And I often think up novel constructions that people quite fancy and indeed are willing to pay their hard earned bucks for.
Once I have thought these things up, I am able to render them to paper/CAD very easily for concrete plan creation. I am never surprised at the appearance of the thing when it is rendered to CAD, I always knew that’s what it would look like. I never saw it in any visual sense, but I knew exactly how it would appear, and I could answer in great detail any question someone might have about it (barring, perhaps, the sorts of questions that require trigonometry/excessive number crunching – the reason I’m putting it to CAD/paper).
To me, this means there isn’t a binary “has ‘imagination’/does not have ‘imagination’” divide. Rather, folks perhaps have different methods of “visualization”. Some folks have a “bitmap” approach (≈Photoshop). From the comments here, it seems some a “vector” approach (≈Illustrator). I would perhaps describe mine as a “CSG” approach (≈OpenSCAD/Grasshopper/etc.).
What’s nice with this phrasing is that nobody is missing anything. Nobody is a-trait. Everyone just has a different method of doing the same sorta thing, perhaps with some relative strengths and weaknesses accordingly, but no fundamental lack of ability to answer any particular question.
The article uses the VVIQ test (Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire), taken on the Internet, to select aphantasiac participants. I cannot take research like that seriously.
> For example: imagine a triangle. What color is it?
> For a true aphantasiac, this question is meaningless.
If you are not an aphantasiac, how do you know what meaning this question has for one? I am pretty sure aphantasiacs can "imagine" a triangle with some color in it. It is just that this imagine manifests differently than it does for you, but how can we measure that objectively?
To elaborate, even for an aphantasiac, a triangle or a color is not something abstract. You can draw it on a paper, and it is right there. If you close your eyes, you can remember what you have drawn on the paper, aphantasiac or not. So how exactly do you distinguish the quality of memories here? Certainly not with vague internet questionnaires. Research like that makes me really angry.
If I say "imagine a triangle" and ask you what color it is, why would it have a color if there is no image there? I didn't ask you to imagine a red triangle. Only a triangle. The only way it logically gets a color is if you are visualizing it.
In my mind there is an infinite void. No color per say, think of the void of space, without a single spec of dust.
This void is a 3D space. There is a general sense of up, down, left, right, front and back.
In this void I materialize a triangle. It is a wireframe. 3 lines, all the same length. No color, they are just lines.
By default the triangle is resting on one side, pointing up, and facing me. I can then rotate and move my mind "camera" around it while simultaneously rotating and moving the triangle as well.
The more complex the shapes, the more shapes, the harder it is to maintain coherency. I can close my eyes and concentrate to help.
I can assign colors if I wish to, but they are not really there visually. More like an extra information attached to the shape.
I understand your reasoning, but it is not very logical. It depends on what you mean by "imagine a triangle". A triangle doesn't have to be filled with a color to be a triangle. Why would you imagine it with any color in it in the first place, not just a wireframe, being transparent inside? So if your triangle doesn't have a color, it might be because you are more accurate in your imagination, not because you have no triangle imagination.
So without a proper way of defining things like "imagine" or "mental picture" first, tests like yours or like VVIQ are not well-defined. Now, maybe I don't understand the meaning of VVIQ because I have aphantasia. Or maybe I don't understand the meaning of VVIQ because I am a logician and mathematician, and I am very peculiar about "meaning". Maybe even both. Without a doubt though, VVIQ is not an objective test, because its elements are not properly defined.
The point isn’t to rigorously define “visualize” or “imagine”—we will probably never be able to do this. The point is to use a verbal prompt to elicit a mental experience and then to try to probe that experience.
> A triangle doesn't have to be filled with a color to be a triangle. Why would you imagine it with any color in it in the first place, not just a wireframe, being transparent inside?
That’s just it: when I imagine a triangle, it is a definite image with a definite color. The visual details like color come automatically for me. I cannot imagine it in the more abstract way you are describing. If it’s a wireframe, the wireframe is gray. It’s always a full, colorful, 3d scene, perhaps vague but definitely with visual detail.
> For a true aphantasiac, this question is meaningless
I confirm.
I would have probably picked up a color at random to play along with the whole “mind’s eye metaphor” before I realized people can actually “see” for real and it’s not a metaphor.
I don't consider myself having aphantasia (I can visualize stuff in my head), but if I imagine a triangle it doesn't by default have a color. It would if the instructions were something like "imagine a red and a blue triangle", but when I only imagine shapes they don't necessarily have a color.
I feel similarly, though less about the lack of objective testing and more about the inability to even be sure we're talking about the same thing. Like I can visualize stuff fine, but not literally see it like some Hololens overlay -- it's in a sort of abstract internal space separate from what you see with your eyes. Sometimes I wonder whether some self-diagnosed aphantasiacs only think they are because they overestimate how potent "normal" visualization should be. (Or maybe these visual hallucinations are normal and I'm underdiagnosing myself!)
One method to possibly tell the difference is visual analogizing. Like, "picture" the Sydney Opera House, and then (without thinking in words) name some other objects it resembles. Someone with visual imagination should be able to rattle off stuff like sailboats or seashells or folded napkins, while a true aphantasiac should be lost without being able to look at a picture or derive an answer from a mental list of attributes.
I disagree. Asking someone to name shapes that resemble for example the Sydney Opera house seems to me just a test of creativity, not ability to “visualize” something in your head.
I don’t think we’ll ever get a test, because the entire concept of visualization and imagination is so unquantifiable and abstract. We’re all black boxes in a way to each other, with no real way of describing or showing each other how our version of this “visualization” or “image” or … looks or even feels.
It is a creativity test, but doesn't how you get there matter? From what I understand, aphantasiacs think in words, verbalized concepts, remembered facts, relationships, etc. So I'd expect that to make a visual analogy they'd have to first think through the properties of the thing -- "OK, I know this building is white, triangular, curved, near the water..." -- and then come up with other things those attributes describe. But I can just "see" the shape and color of the building in my mind's eye, and mentally make it be something similar, without any internal monologue at all. Actually, if you just gave me a written description of these traits, I'd have a harder time coming up with examples because they're just abstract properties without any specific image to anchor them to -- I could do it, but I'd have to think about it some. But doing the same exercise with a mental image feels much easier.
How can someone judge if two things look similar that are not before your eyes without visualizing them in their mind? Surely some visual comparison and matching must be going on in their head?
The second paragraph of this Guardian article mentions, and links to, but doesn't expound on the biophysical pupillary response to mental visual imagery.
If someone with normal mental visualization ability pictures a "bright" scene, the pupils contract just as they would in response to a bright visual stimulation. Aphants' pupils show no physical response to this test.
Speaking from experience as an aphantasic person, I think it is definitely possible to test objectively. For instance certain IQ tests will test the subject's ability to identify what a pictured object would look like if it were rotated in a certain way.
I have taken just such a test where spatial rotations, IIRC including multi-step ones, were a component, and I scored close to 99th percentile on every section except that one... where I scored 1st percentile. If that's not a strong sign of aphantasia I don't know what is!
This is actually one of the things about aphantasia that has already had a (small) study[0], and the results are actually the opposite! The participants with aphantasia were more likely to both (a) take longer to answer and (b) be _correct_.
I personally have aphantasia and have quite good spatial reasoning, including with mentally rotating objects. I think it's fair to assume that visualization and spatial reasoning are mostly (but not entirely) orthogonal spectra, and it's completely possible for people to fall anywhere on either, just based on how their brain developed its internal strategies throughout normal life.
Yes, objective tests must somehow take into account the multitude of coping mechanisms that people with the condition have developed. "Spatial reasoning" for example is very close to logical reasoning, and I don't see why people with Aphantasia shouldn't be very good at that, albeit slower in "spatial" mode.
fMRI can probably spot it for people like myself who are fully aphantasic.
But:
1. "Imagine a table. There is a ball on the table. The ball rolls off the table onto the floor."
2. "From memory, what color was the ball? The table? The floor? What did you see under the table?"
Neither I nor any other, uh, aphants, that I have known have answers to those questions. Imagination still works, and answers to those questions can be produced interactively if handled appropriately, but, ex: we weren't imagining colors and we didn't see anything at all much less "under the table".
Alternative:
1. "What do you think people do, specifically, when they "count sheep" to go to sleep?"
Our answers to that should just be hilarious for you. Hi-larious.
Understand that we thought you folks "visualizing in your minds eye" were speaking metaphorically. Entirely metaphorically.
Just to understand the baseline you're working form, what data are you drawing on when stating what's "normal"? It has appeared to me throughout this conversation that you are starting from the assumption that your internal experience (at least, with regard to mental imagery) is consistent with the majority and making assertions about the majority based on that.
If you are actually drawing on a larger amount of data, specifically pertaining to the mechanisms of people's internal experiences, that'd be useful to know. If you are not, I'd gently suggest that you're working from a flawed statistical assumption, and that looking at the numerous interactions in this thread where people describe materially different internal experiences ("I can only recall tastes in terms of descriptors" - "I can experience a taste by imagining it"[0]) may be more informative without presuming universal consistency.
I'm not sure what you think you've gained or stated with this remark.
"Mind's eye" and "visualization" refer to actual experiences. Those of us with aphantasia (no exceptions that I've encountered so far) did not realize these words referred to actual experiences.
Define "actual experiences". Normal people can not imagine an object like a red apple and actually see it, same as if one existed right in front of them. They can "visualize" it (just like you, it sounds), as in they can think of what it looks like, they would recognize one, they can even imagine broader scenes involving this apple (like an entire grocery aisle) but there is no "actual experience." You couldn't walk straight otherwise, you'd constantly be dodging imaginary objects that you'd be seeing.
The generous interpretation of everything you've written so far is that you have aphantasia and don't realize it, and when it finally registers you'll feel like a real ass about these comments.
There’s a recent episode of the Radiolab podcast about aphantasia. They specifically talk about a test for the condition. It’s worth the 30 minute listen.
